A Darker Domain - Val McDermid

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cast a quick contemptuous glance at Misha. ‘What about them? They don’t show their faces round here.’

      ‘But some of them have still got family here or in East Wemyss. Brothers, cousins. They might know something about my dad.’

      Jenny shook her head firmly. ‘I’ve never heard tell of him since the day he walked out. Not a whisper, good or bad. The other men he went with, they were no friends of his. The only reason he took a lift with them was he had no money to make his own way south. He’ll have used them like he used us and then he’ll have gone his own sweet way once he got where he wanted to be.’ She dropped another potato in the pan and said without enthusiasm, ‘Are you staying for your dinner?’

      ‘No, I’ve got things to see to,’ Misha said, impatient at her mother’s refusal to take her quest seriously. ‘There must be somebody he’s kept in touch with. Who would he have talked to? Who would he have told what he was planning?’

      Jenny straightened up and put the pan on the old-fashioned gas cooker. Misha and John offered to replace the chipped and battered stove every time they sat down to the production number that was Sunday dinner, but Jenny always refused with the air of frustrating martyrdom she brought to every offer of kindness. ‘You’re out of luck there too.’ She eased herself on to one of the two chairs that flanked the tiny table in the cramped kitchen. ‘He only had one real pal. Andy Kerr. He was a red-hot Commie, was Andy. I tell you, by 1984, there weren’t many still keeping the red flag flying, but Andy was one of them. He’d been a union official well before the strike. Him and your father, they’d been best pals since school.’ Her face softened for a moment and Misha could almost make out the young woman she’d been. ‘They were always up to something, those two.’

      ‘So where do I find this Andy Kerr?’ Misha sat down opposite her mother, her desire to be gone temporarily abandoned.

      Her mother’s face twisted into a wry grimace. ‘Poor soul. If you can find Andy, you’ll be quite the detective.’ She leaned across and patted Misha’s hand. ‘He’s another one of your father’s victims.’

      ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘Andy adored your father. He thought the sun shone out of his backside. Poor Andy. The strike put him under terrible pressure. He believed in the strike, he believed in the struggle. But it broke his heart to see the hardship his men were going through. He was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and the local executive forced him to go on the sick not long before your father shot the craw. Nobody saw him after that. He lived out in the middle of nowhere, so nobody noticed he was away.’ She gave a long, weary sigh. ‘He sent a postcard to your dad from some place up north. But of course, he was blacklegging by then, so he never got it. Later, when Andy came back, he left a note for his sister, saying he couldn’t take any more. Killed himself, the poor soul.’

      ‘What’s that got to do with my dad?’ Misha demanded.

      ‘I always thought your dad going scabbing was the straw that broke the camel’s back.’ Jenny’s expression was pious shading into smug. ‘That was what drove Andy over the edge.’

      ‘You can’t know that.’ Misha pulled away in disgust.

      ‘I’m not the only one around here that thinks the same thing. If your father had confided in anybody, it would have been Andy. And that would have been one burden too many for that fragile wee soul. He took his own life, knowing that his one real friend had betrayed everything he stood for.’ On that melodramatic note, Jenny got to her feet and lifted a bag of carrots from the vegetable rack. It was clear she had shot her bolt on the subject of Mick Prentice.

      Karen sneaked a look at her watch. Whatever fine qualities Misha Gibson might possess, brevity was not one of them. ‘So Andy Kerr turned out to be literally a dead end?’

      ‘My mother thinks so. But apparently they never found his body. Maybe he didn’t kill himself after all.’ Misha said.

      ‘They don’t always turn up,’ Karen said. ‘Sometimes the sea claims them. Or else the wilderness. There’s still a lot of empty space in this country.’ Resignation took possession of Misha’s face. She was, Karen thought, a woman inclined to believe what she was told. If anyone knew that, it would be her mother. Perhaps things weren’t quite as clear cut as Jenny Prentice wanted her daughter to think.

      ‘That’s true,’ Misha said. ‘And my mother did say that he left a note. Will the police still have the note?’

      Karen shook her head. ‘I doubt it. If we ever had it, it will have been given back to his family.’

      ‘Would there not have been an inquest? Would they not have needed it for that?’

      ‘You mean a Fatal Accident Inquiry,’ Karen said. ‘Not without a body, no. If there’s a file at all, it’ll be a missing-person case.’

      ‘But he’s not missing. His sister had him declared dead. Their parents both died in the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, but apparently their dad had always refused to believe Andy was dead so he hadn’t changed his will to leave the house to the sister. She had to go to court to get Andy pronounced dead so she would inherit. That’s what my mother said, anyway.’ Not a flicker of doubt disturbed Misha’s expression.

      Karen made a note, Andy Kerr’s sister, and added a little asterisk to it. ‘So if Andy killed himself, we’re back with scabbing as the only reasonable explanation of your dad’s disappearance. Have you made any attempts to contact the guys he’s supposed to have gone away with?’

      Ten past nine on a Monday morning, and already Misha felt exhausted. She should be at the Sick Kids by now, focusing on Luke. Playing with him, reading to him, cajoling therapists into expanding their regimes, discussing treatment plans with medical staff, using all her energy to fill them with her conviction that her son could be saved. And if he could be saved, they all owed it to him to shovel every scrap of therapeutic intervention his way.

      But instead, she was sitting on the floor, back to the wall, knees bent, phone cradled in her lap, notepad at her side. She told herself she was summoning the courage to make a phone call, but she knew in a corner of her mind exhaustion was the real reason for her inactivity.

      Other families used the weekends to relax, to recharge their batteries. But not the Gibsons. For a start, fewer staff were on duty at the hospital, so Misha and John felt obliged to pile even more energy than usual into Luke. There was no respite when they came home either. Misha’s acceptance that the last best hope for their son lay in finding her father had simply escalated the conflict between her missionary ardour and John’s passive optimism.

      This weekend had been harder going than usual. Having a time limit put on Luke’s life imbued each moment they shared with more value and more poignancy. It was hard to avoid a kind of melodramatic sentimentality. As soon as they’d left the hospital on Saturday Misha had picked up the refrain she’d been delivering since she’d seen her mother. ‘I need to go to Nottingham, John. You know I do.’

      He shoved his hands into the pockets of his rain jacket, thrusting his head forward as if he was butting against a high wind. ‘Just phone the guy,’ he said. ‘If he’s got anything to tell you, he’ll tell you on the phone.’

      ‘Maybe not.’ She took a couple of steps at a trot to keep pace with him. ‘People always tell you more face to face. He could maybe put me on to the other guys that went down with him. They might know something.’

      John snorted. ‘And how come your mother can only remember one guy’s name? How come she can’t put you on to the other guys?’

      ‘I told you. She’s put everything out of her mind about that time. I really had to push her before she came up with Logan Laidlaw’s name.’

      ‘And you don’t think it’s amazing that the only guy whose name she can remember has no family in the

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